


i was a billion little pieces (till you pulled me into focus)

by bluesey



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 14:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7442617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesey/pseuds/bluesey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst part is that her mother told her he's probably her soulmate. That's what happens when you have one, she said, they come to you in dreams.</p><p> </p><p>(or, you meet your soulmate in your dreams before you meet them in real life, but you can't remember what they look like when you wake up + whatever mark you get on your skin, your soulmate gets them too)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was a billion little pieces (till you pulled me into focus)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amirmitchell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amirmitchell/gifts).



> For kalista, my love. i know my ass took forever to get this to you, but i hope you love it anyway. also, special shout out to serena for being magical.
> 
> title from venus by sleeping at last

The first time she sees him she's nine and dreaming of peach summers and pink tinted cheeks while looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. He seems a little bit older than she is, maybe by a few months, and he's the only thing in her dream that looks off, like he doesn't belong here, so much sharper and clearer than anything else.

She rides her bike in circles around him, eyeing his blue flannel shirt and the way he stuffs his hands in his pockets like he's nervous. But he looks back at her without backing down, and she likes that about him instantly.

“Who are you?” she asks. “I've never seen you before. I thought you're only supposed to dream about people you know.”

He doesn't say anything for a while as he scuffs the toe of his boot on the pavement. Maya's dreaming that she's somewhere in the countryside, away from the city, somewhere with orchids and parks with swing sets that don't squeak. Dreams that she's in a neighborhood with pastel colored houses, where sunlight reaches without breaking between skyscrapers.

“I was dreaming about going back home,” he tells her, softly, a little sadly, without answering her question. “But then I ended up here. Wherever here is.”

“This is my dream,” she says with a smile and points to a light blue house in front of them. “Both my parents and me live right there, you see? Dad has an office job, so he wears suits and stuff. Mom helps him with his tie before he goes to work and she drops me off at school every morning at 7:30 sharp before she goes to work. She owns a bakery a few miles from here. I could show you sometime. She makes the best blueberry pies.”

He's looking at her weird, like he's trying to figure her out but he can't. “This is what you dream about? Mine are usually about superheroes and stuff. This is so…simple.”

Maya shrugs. “I like this life. So you wanna play hide and seek? Riley should be coming over soon.”

They hang out together, in her dream, and she likes him. He's nice to her, and lets her tease him sometimes. When she falls down on her bike and scrapes her knee, he wipes off the dirt and gravel and runs inside her house to get her an ice pack.

Her dad helps them build a tree house in her backyard while they sip on lemonade and stain their shirts with cherry popsicles. Katy comes out sometimes to check on them and help, distracting her dad with kisses until he swats her hands away with a laugh. Her heart feels full here, in this dream, with her family happy and whole.

Maya carves their initials, _M + L,_ into the bark of the tree when they're done. She doesn't know how she knows his name – Lucas – but dreams are nonsensical like that so she doesn't question it. “Because it's ours,” she tells him. “No one else's.”

When she wakes up that morning she can't remember what he looks like at all, or what his name was, just a blurred silhouette of a boy at the edge of her memory.

*

Maya’s thirteen and comes home from school one day to find her mother sitting on the couch with a pen between her lips and papers that are probably unpaid bills scattered all over the coffee table. She takes the half empty bottle of whisky from the floor by Katy’s feet and doesn't bother telling her that there's blue ink on her cheek.

“Hey, baby girl,” she greets absently. “How was school?”

“Fine. Got an A on my science test. Mr. Nelson says I’m his star pupil.”

“That's great. Proud of you.”

Maya frowns. Anyone with a pulse would be able to see through that fib as if it was made of glass. Instead of dwelling too long on it, she puts the bottle back in the liquor cabinet with the rest that's been suspiciously dwindling in numbers the past few weeks and retreats to her room without another word from her mother.

There's a missed call from Riley on her phone but she's not really up for conversation at the moment so she shoots her a text saying she'll talk later. She lies on her bed, a sketch pad in her lap, and she tries her hardest to remember what her dream boy looks like so she could draw him. She only has the edges of him, the scruffy hair, the scrawny build of a boy still trying to fit into his body. But she can't remember the color of his eyes or what his smile looks like or what his voice sounds like.

It's frustrating because, sometimes, she'll think she has something solid to cling onto, like maybe the memory of a dimple in his cheek or a chipped tooth, but then as soon as she tries to put pen to paper it disappears like the smoke from a blown out candle.

The worst part is that her mother told her he's probably her soulmate. That's what happens when you have one, she said, they come to you in dreams. She wants to know him so badly, she wants to _remember_ , more than anything. She can't deal with seeing him every time she closes her eyes to sleep, can't deal with waking up the next morning and knowing that she had a good dream with him in there but not being able to remember it.

What's the point of a soulmate then? she asked. What's the point if you only see them in your dreams, but not in reality?

Her mother had told her that having a soulmate shouldn't stop Maya from living her life. That she shouldn't put everything on hold to look for them – especially if it ends up being like what Katy had with her soulmate, with Maya’s dad. She didn't want that for Maya, so she just told her to live how she chooses and not to worry about the pressure that comes with having a soulmate, but if she ends up finding one along the way then that's great.

Maya sees it when she's changing out of her school clothes, a plum colored bruise that spans along her side.

“What the fuck,” she whispers, touching the injury with gentle fingers. It doesn't hurt, not until she presses really hard against it, but it's a dull kind of pain. Like a bruise that's almost completely faded. But this, this looks like it should've been painful.

Must be a soulmate thing. Something else she remembers her mother telling her is that once you have a soulmate, you're connected to them in ways you're not connected to anyone else. Sometimes you feel what they feel.

“Hope you're doin’ okay, whoever you are,” she says as she slips on a shirt.

It's a thing that happens more frequently, bruises showing up on her body that she knows aren't her own. She'll have to put on heavy makeup on days she'll wake up with a black eye, or put on a long sleeve shirt when her knuckles are cracked and bloody. And she wants to ask dream boy, if that's even her soulmate, if he's okay and why he seems to be hurting a lot. But once she starts dreaming, it's like her real life and her dream life are two separate worlds. Once she's in there, she can't seem to remember anything that could link the two worlds together like that. To somehow bring his existence into reality.

So she doesn't ask, but they do build sandcastles on the beach and she lets him braid her hair and he tells her stories that she won't remember when she wakes up but it's good. It's good.

*

She's fifteen when she realizes that she likes girls just as much as she likes boys.

Her name’s Missy and whenever she speaks, venom drips from her tongue and it kickstarts something in Maya’s chest. Riley doesn't like her so much, says she's a worse influence than Maya is, but she just takes that as a challenge.

“Oh, well, I guess I'm just gonna have to fix that,” she tells Riley with a grin that's a little too dangerous. “I have to be the best at being the worst, you know this.”

She and Missy start hanging out more often when their parents are still sleeping, riding their bikes to lonely gas stations and abandoned parking lots, learning how to roll joints and bat their eyelashes to convince the boys outside to buy them liquor. Acting older than they are, than they should, because the world isn't kind to girls like them. Girls with tragedy in their blood, with their broken hearts tucked underneath the sleeves of their leather jackets.

Maya likes to tell Riley that she and Missy are going to burn the world to the ground until all that's left is dust and ash, because that's who they are, that's what they do. “It's okay, because you're gonna be the one to fix our mess. You always fix my messes. That's what everybody thinks, don't they?”

Riley just hums and pets her hair.

When she falls asleep that night, after drinking too much vodka with Missy until her head spun, she meets Lucas at the diner by her dream house. Everything's a little fuzzy in her inebriated state, the edges hazy and falling apart at the seams, even him.

“You okay, Maya?” he asks, sitting in a booth across from her. He looks concerned - it's a cute look on him, she thinks.

“I'm just – “ she slurs. She didn't know that being drunk can transfer into her dreams. Maybe she found a bridge between the two worlds after all. “I'm fine, I'm just a little bit. You know. Not here.”

There's a small smile on his face and he rolls his eyes fondly. “Obviously. None of us really are.”

He starts fading away with the rest of the world, in and out, and she grabs his arm in haste. “No - wait, don't go. Stay here.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” he tells her. “I'm right here.”

“Okay,” she says, loosening her grip on him until he stands out against everything else, until he's the focal point. “Okay.”

He orders fries and a milkshake and she obviously steals some of it, but it doesn't seem like he minds too much.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Lucas?” she asks as she dips a fry into his whipped cream. He gives her a look akin to disgust but doesn't comment on it.

“I don't know, do you?” he answers.

She hesitates for a few moments, her leg bouncing up and down restlessly before she tells him, “I think you might be mine.”

“I wouldn't mind it,” Lucas says with a shrug. She gets up from her seat to sit beside him then, rests her head on his shoulder and sighs. She likes this world, with him in it. It's a lot calmer, quieter.

“I wish I could remember you when I wake up,” she mumbles, the words coming out a little slurred and sticky, like something’s trying to stop her from saying them. “I wish I could know you.”

“Maybe one day we'll get that,” he says, his voice echoing inside her head, and she hopes he's right. She wants to know more about him than what she gets in this dream world, wants him to know more about her too.

Because what they get here, it's good. But it's not _enough_. Nothing ever seems enough for her these days, but it isn't like she can change any of that.

Her dreams get darker as she gets older and sheds away the disillusioned idea of one day having a perfect life  – whatever that means. Jumping on cotton candy clouds becomes chasing the sky until it’s blanketed with midnight black and the moon’s crooked smile. Becomes running down the street barefoot, ignoring the shattered glass of broken beer bottles on the pavement, the flickering neon lights of vacant motel signs guiding them home.

No one’s in her dreams anymore, besides her and Lucas, and she likes it better this way. All the houses are empty, with chipped paint and broken fences, smoke rising from the hood of an abandoned car off the side of the road. Everything a hollowed out shell of what it used to be.

Lucas frowns at her, takes in her smudged eye makeup and the cigarette pack in her back pocket. “What happened to blueberry pies and summer beach days?”

When she was younger she’d dream she wore clothes like Riley did –  floral dresses and lollipop skirts with ruffles on her sleeves. Now there are holes in her jeans and paint stains on the shirt she's wearing underneath her worn through leather jacket.

“I grew up,” she says, and then tugs on his hand to drag him to a house she dreamed up by a lake. The floorboards creak under their feet with each step and there's only one working light bulb. They sit in the middle of the living room floor, Maya’s jacket draped across her legs, and Lucas looks around to see that there’s no furniture. “I have an idea.”

“Oh boy.”

“Just hear me out,” she says, quickly pulling her hair up into a messy bun. “I told you that I want to remember you when I wake up, so I'm gonna try something that'll maybe help with that.”

His eyebrows shoot up skeptically and she understands. “And that is?”

Lucas blinks, and when he opens his eyes she's holding a wooden box in her hand.

There's a smile on her face, small and sharp, like the needle she pulls out of the box, holds it up to his face so he can see. “We're gonna get some stick and pokes.”

“I'm – what?”

“Tattoos, Lucas,” she says like she's speaking to a four year old. “You're gonna do me, and I'm gonna – “

“No – I _know_ what they are, but. You sure about this?”

She shrugs then, bites her lower lip and drops her gaze to the needle between her fingers, twisting it around. “I don't know. But I wanna try, at least. Maybe it'll still be there when I wake up.”

So that's what they do. She lies on her side and lifts her shirt so she can expose her rib cage to him. “This is one of the worst places to get a tattoo done apparently. I wanna see if I'm gonna be able to feel it.”

He doesn't want to do it, doesn't want to hurt her, she can see that on his face, but she shoves at his hand and he gets to work. Lucas isn't an artist so she told him he could do whatever he felt comfortable, that it didn't matter to her because she didn't need anything pretty. It takes him a while, and his fingers shake a little, but she likes the feel of his hands on her bare skin.

“Okay, I'm done,” he says finally and she hears the clatter of the needle when he places it back into the box. He wipes the area clean gently, careful not to press too hard.

Maya twists her hips so she can see the tattoo. “ _Per aspera ad astra._ What does it mean?”

“’Through hardships to the stars’,” he replies, his eyes fixated on the messily scrawled words he wrote on her skin.

She snorts. “Who knew you were a Latin nerd? Or is that only something in your dreams?”

“Hey, I'm a multidimensional type of guy,” he says with an amused grin as Maya sits up so she can tie a knot at the back of her shirt. She’s getting another needle ready so she can tattoo him next. “My mom – she used to say that to me all the time. Especially whenever my dad would leave for months at a time because of work. Or she’d remind me of it when I’d fuck up at school. I used to write it all over my notebook when I had to wait for her to pick me up from detention.”

Maya feels her heart hammer suddenly inside her rib cage. Lucas has never told her anything like this before. They've been friends for years, technically, but they've never really talked about things that are important to them. She wonders what wall has been knocked down for this to happen. Maybe her dream world is becoming soft and allowing for them to connect this way, for them to open up about the lives they have outside of this.

“You get in trouble a lot, cowboy?” she asks, wiping his wrist clean.

He shrugs, ducks his head so he can watch her hands. “Sometimes. Anger issues and all that.”

Her fingers still. “ _You_? You have anger issues? But you're like, the softest person I kinda sorta know.”

“I've been better about it,” he tells her. “It's better here, in your dreams, where that other stuff doesn't matter.”

She doesn't know if she believes that but she hums under her breath, says: “Thanks for telling me that,” and pokes his skin with the needle. She carves planets into his wrist and his palm, stars across his forearm, a hundred tiny constellations on his skin to remind him that he holds the entire universe in his hand.

“You're an artist,” he states simply as he watches her. Her eyebrows are creased in concentration, her fingers much more steady than his own had been.

“I paint sometimes,” she tells him absently. “Back home.”

“If we ever meet,” he begins, “would you show me?”

“I don't show them to many people, but I'd show them to you.” There seems to be something else she wants to say, but her jaw locks briefly. “I – I tried drawing you. Or, the you that I remembered from here. But I couldn't, not really. You're more of a shadow than anything.”

When she's finished she cleans the area carefully like he did to her before. She takes him outside, it's dark, and all the stars have come out of hiding. They share a bottle of rum as they lie on the grass by the lake, and he holds his arm up high so they can see the stars on his skin alongside the stars in the sky.

“Have you ever thought about me?” she asks, her fingers tracing Orion's Belt etched across the vein on his wrist. “Like, in your real life.”

“I don't remember now, but probably. I probably think about you a whole lot.”

“Are you lonely here, Lucas?” Maya doesn't look at him when she asks this, but her hands stay on his skin.

“No,” he says, and when she glances over at him there's a soft, reassuring smile on his face.

“I'm enough for you here?” She hopes he doesn't hear the crack in her voice, or how tired she is.

“You'd be enough for me anywhere.”

*

Maya wakes up the next morning with a sting on her rib cage but when she lifts up her shirt, nothing is there.

She takes her sketchbook from underneath her pillow and writes _per aspera ad astra_ on the top corner of the page where she's drawing her dream boy. She can't remember what the words mean, or how she knows of them, but they feel like a sort of comfort.

*

Maya and Riley met when they were six years old, colliding into one another like crashing stars in the playground behind their school. Maya was all skinned knees and dirt underneath her fingernails, and Riley was all bubblegum Chapstick and perfectly braided pigtails.

They got along instantly, despite their differences, and they ruled the playground as kings with their wooden swords and plastic crowns. They met Farkle Minkus in the sandbox playing all by himself and so they appointed him as their knight. He only ever wanted to be the ruler of his own empire, but from then on Riley and Maya’s wants were his first priority, something that hasn't ever really changed. Farkle, seven years old, already knew how to love more than anyone, with every inch of himself.

“I don't care about soulmates,” he said once, after Maya told them about her dreams, fourteen and anxiety running slow and thick like lava the summer before they began high school. The three of them were squished together on a hammock out on his patio, coke bottle caps and orange peels scattered on the floor.

“Why not?” Riley had asked, a crease growing between her eyebrows. Her hair was matted to her forehead with sweat, light yellow sundress sticking to her thighs, curiosity perpetually glowing from underneath her skin.“I care. Don't you wanna know who you're destined to be with?”

“Not really,” he said. “I’d rather not concern myself with things that hold no logical explanation as to why or how it happens. The concept of soulmates – it's confusing. I'd rather love with no constraints. And if neither of you are my soulmates then I don't care.”

“So even if you had tangible proof that they exist,” Maya asked, “it still wouldn't make a difference to you?”

“Nope.”

“See, you _say_ that, but watch in five years you're gonna find that person and you're gonna forget about all that science-y stuff because love isn't rational or formulaic,” Riley told him. “It's not something you can measure with a beaker or weigh on a scale. It's something that just – _exists_. And if you end up falling in love, that's just something you're gonna have to deal with.”

It catches him by surprise when they're seventeen and there's a girl named Smackle in Farkle’s chemistry class with a smile that makes him feel like gravity never existed. Like the earth stopped spinning in its orbit. Like the ground shook underneath the soles of his feet. She's not someone he'd ever thought he’d go for, but when he looks at her Riley’s fourteen year old voice is a broken record inside his head. And he thinks – _is this what it feels like?_

*

“There's someone I want you to meet, so I need you to get up. Please.”

Maya glances up to see Riley standing over her with a wide grin on her face. Missy's stomach is acting as her pillow so she doesn't really want to move any time soon, but Riley kicks her lightly in her shin so she obeys and jumps up from her spot on the grass. 

There's a boy standing next to Riley, an easy smile on his face as he stuffs his hands in his pockets. There's something strangely familiar about him, but Maya can't seem to place it. “This is Lucas. He just came from Texas.”

“Ah, so we got a Ranger Rick to add to our little collection of misfit toys,” Maya responds and she returns his smirk with one of her own. The air between them feels charged, buzzing underneath her skin, hot wiring every one of her nerve cells.

He tips an imaginary hat at her. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” His accent is heavy, most likely, she thinks, for her benefit.

Her eyebrows shoot up and she slips her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “You think you can keep up in a place like this? The city can be a little too fast-paced for a country boy like yourself.”

Lucas shrugs and takes a step towards her, plants his feet wide apart like boys usually do, and she sees Riley’s wistful smile when she looks at him. “I may surprise you.”

“Highly doubtful,” she responds flatly.

“Anyway,” Riley interjects and jumps in the space between them. “This is my best friend Maya, and her girlfriend Missy.”

He waves at Missy and she returns it with a sour smile.

Somehow, he fits into their group easily. Sometimes they hang out on Riley’s rooftop, or they take aimless drives down the city, but mostly they get together at this diner near their high school to drink milkshakes and throw crumpled napkin balls at each other. They're sixteen and careless, a certain type of freedom singing beneath their skin that comes with being a teenager.

And, somehow, Maya gets close to Lucas like she hasn't with anybody in a long time. They still argue occasionally, banter like children just to see who can get under each other’s skin first, but – he feels like an old friend, ever since the first day they met. And Maya doesn't like to admit it, but she needs someone like that these days, someone steady.

Charlie Gardner comes around to their table to ask for their order, his eyes lingering a little longer on Riley than anyone else. Maya spends more time here than any of her other friends, especially when she ditches classes on days she doesn't want to keep up pretenses anymore, to come here for the quiet mornings and bitter coffee. So she knows Charlie better than they do, and she’s grown to like him. He's a grade older than they are, around Lucas’s age, so he's a senior in high school.

“Can I get you guys anything?” he asks them, and when his eyes land on Maya he gives her a smile and a nod that comes with familiarity. They order burgers and soda, and when Maya doesn't feel like talking anymore she grabs her sketch pad from her bag and starts drawing the scene around her.

There's a family sitting to their left, a mother trying to feed mushed bananas to her crying baby. They're quiet, though, just trying to get through the day. And there's a couple to their right, a boy and a girl sitting on opposite sides of the booth. They're having a serious conversation, it looks like, but every once in a while the girl would smile and the tension at the back of the boy’s neck would ease. Charlie comes and goes, rushing around the diner to bring the customers their food, only briefly stopping by their table when he has free time. In her sketch, he's a little blurry.

Maya brings her attention back when she feels Lucas rest his chin on her shoulder. “Can I see?”

“I don't show my drawings to just anybody, you know,” she teases, shutting her sketchbook before he could get a good look at it.

“She barely even shows them to us,” Riley says, gesturing between her and Farkle.

“Me neither,” Missy contributes. “And I've seen her naked.”

Maya kicks her under the table but she just grins in response. They’re not really together anymore, not in an exclusive sense, because nothing feels permanent to either of them knowing in the back of their heads they each have their own soulmate somewhere out there. But they still kiss each other dizzy in Missy’s bedroom sometimes, and that's enough.

“Maybe one day?” he asks, a little quietly, just for her.

“Hm, sure. One day.”

*

Katy's in the living room when she wakes up, frantically running around in search for something – her keys, Maya assumes. Maya wanders over to their kitchen to grab a cup of coffee as Katy falls on her knees to check under the couch. The pot is cold and she wonders if it’s the same one from yesterday morning, but she just decides to microwave it and drink it anyway.

“Morning, mom,” she greets as she withdraws strawberry jelly from the fridge to make herself some toast. She washes her hands in the sink before making her breakfast, watches with clinical interest as the ink she woke up with that's surely from her soulmate fades away.

 _call PJ_ , it read. She's not entirely sure what it means.

“Morning, baby girl,” she replies absently. “Have you seen my keys? I swear I _just_ had them – “

“Mm, I don't know, maybe check the – “

“Wait! Found ‘em!” Katy exclaims then, jumping up from the floor with her keys in hand. “Okay, now I really gotta go, I'm running _so_ late.”

“Okay, see you later then? Maybe?”

Katy stops at the door at the tone in her daughter’s voice, watches as she makes herself some breakfast, her hair messy and her eyes tired. She wonders when was the last time her daughter had a good night’s sleep. She feels sick that she doesn't know the answer. “Hey. I'm probably gonna be home early tonight – around 9? Wanna go grab some dinner at the diner you love?”

Maya's shocked more than anything that her mother actually remembers something that's a part of her life. “Uh, sure. Yeah, that sounds great.”

Her mother grins at her and drops a wink before leaving. “Don't be late.”

“Wouldn't dream of it.”

*

Charlie comes around to refill her coffee for the third time that night, adding a little extra sugar and cinnamon because he knows that’s how she likes it when she's feeling a little down. “You need anything else, babe?” he asks softly.

“No, I'm fine, thanks,” she replies. She's worrying her bottom lip raw, breaking the skin around her thumb, her leg restlessly bouncing up and down so he knows that she's not, but he doesn't push her any further.

Her eyes find the clock hanging on the wall again. _12:34 a.m._ She wonders how much longer she's going to tell herself _she'll be here, she'll make it_ before she starts to believe that she's not going to.

She doesn't show up. No one is surprised.

*

Maya calls up Lucas one night.

“Hey. You wanna go for a walk?”

She hears rustling on the other end and a soft groan. “It's two in the morning. Are you okay?”

“Fine. So is that a yes or a no? I could just ask Missy instead –“

“No, I'll come,” he answers quickly and she hears him shuffling around in his room.

“Okay, great, because I'm already outside your window so hurry your ass up.” She hangs up before he can reply, leans against the stairway railing leading up to his apartment to wait for him. It's a cold night so she's got a heavy coat on, her hands deep inside its pockets in search for warmth.

Lucas takes the stairs down two at a time until he's standing right in front of her. He looks sleepy, squinty eyes bleary, but he's wearing a smile and for the first time Maya lets herself admit that he's maybe sorta beautiful.

“I like your outfit,” she tells him with a half-smirk as they fall into step beside each other. He’s wearing a baseball tee with a pair of cowboy boot print pajama pants. “Fitting.”

“I know you're being sarcastic but I'm gonna say thank you anyway,” he responds cheerfully. He waits a while before asking, letting Maya lead them around the block, giving her the space she needs. “So what's on your mind?”

“So, I, um,” Maya takes a deep breath before answering, gathering all her courage into her lungs. “I applied to NYU.”

“That's great! I did too,” he says with a grin. “Maybe we’ll get to go to the same university; how cool would that be? We can be roommates so I can annoy you for four more years.”

She scuffs her shoes on the sidewalk, blowing out air through puffed cheeks. “If I even get in.”

“Hey,” he says and he must've caught on to her anxiety because his voice is soft now. Lucas places a hand on her forearm and squeezes gently. “I have no doubt that they'll take you. You've worked hard, Maya.”

“I just…I know I'm not as good as everyone else that's applying,” she mutters. “And I don't mind going to a community college if it comes to that, or not even gong at all, but…I'm always gonna feel like no matter how hard I try I'm just not gonna be enough for anyone.”

Lucas stops them so he can turn to her, his face determined, a hard glint in his eyes that makes her want to believe whatever it is that he's going to say. “Listen to me when I say this, Maya - you’re enough. I promise you, you'll always be enough. You have to believe that.”

She hasn't been on a roller coaster since she was twelve, but she remembers the dizzy, free-falling feeling in the pit of her stomach that comes with a steep drop. This moment felt a lot like that. Maya lets out a forced laugh, hoping that'll cover the rush of warmth she feels for him all of a sudden, the warmth she feels at being accepted for all that she is for what seems like the first time in a long while. “Don't get all soft on me now, Sundance.”

He frowns a little, his eyes searching her face for – something. “I'm serious, Maya. I want you to know that you're important to – to a lot of people. Tell me you know that.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” She turns around and continues walking so she doesn't have to look at him anymore. She knows he doesn't believe her, but that's fine with her. “You know what sounds really good right now?”

“What?” His voice sounds exasperated.

“Getting drunk on the beach. Let’s go.” She takes his hand and pulls him inside a 7/11 where she grabs a random bottle of wine, using the fake ID she and Missy got when they turned sixteen.

It feels like a dream. They run to catch the late bus, Maya thinking she's being inconspicuous by hiding the wine inside her coat. There's no one else on the bus with them, the only noise she hears is the crunch of gravel underneath the tires. It feels like a dream when she leans her head against the window and there's a faint green glow in the air around them that makes everything so surreal. But – Lucas’s thigh is pressed against her own and every so often he would flex his fingers so his pinky would brush across the back of her hand. It feels like a dream, but she is too aware of him sitting so close to her to know that it's not.  

The bus drops them off a couple blocks away from the beach so she opens the bottle of wine as they walk.

“Better hope the cops don't catch you,” Lucas says absently. He keeps trying to put his hands in his pockets but his pajama pants don't have any, so he's stuck with not knowing what to do with them. He crosses his arms over his chest instead and Maya wishes she was brave enough to reach out and hold them.

She gives him a disinterested look before she tips her head back to take a generous amount.

“Right,” he says. A corner of his mouth lifts up. “You don't care.”

“Mm-mm,” she agrees and passes him the bottle. He glances around quickly before he takes a sip, handing it back to her before he even swallows. That gets her to laugh. “Learn to live a little, cowboy. It's no fun always following the rules.”

“I break the rules,” he mutters indignantly. “Sometimes. I just don't like the idea of going to jail.”

Maya rolls her eyes and skips ahead, turning around so she's walking backwards in front of him. “Don't be dramatic. No one is going to go to jail tonight. Now take a sip of this very delicious wine that I bought with my own money – a bigger one this time, you fucking loser – and loosen up.”

He eyes her warily but accepts the bottle once again, his fingers brushing hers. When they finally catch sight of the water, already finished with half the bottle by that time, they trip over themselves running across the sand. Maya slips off her shoes and rolls up her jeans as Lucas does the same, helping her lay her coat out on the sand to act as a blanket.

Maya takes another sip before she slides her hand in his, forcing herself not to look at his face and gauge his reaction. But he doesn't coil in disgust or let go, so she takes that as a good sign, and drags them towards the water. It nips at their toes, ice cold, and she jumps back with a laugh.

“This was a horrible idea, Maya,” he says, amused, as he wraps an arm around her shoulders to tuck her into his side. He seems lighter at the moment, and Maya thanks the alcohol for that. “It's way too cold out here.”

“God, way to ruin the mood with your complaints,” she replies as she moves them back to the spot in the sand where her coat is, pulling him down next to her. “This is why we can't have nice things.”

Lucas rolls his eyes and flicks the tip of her nose, which elicits a pout from her. They pass the bottle back and forth until it's finished, and it's a cold night, but his hand on her skin is burning.

“It's late,” he mumbles and when she looks over at him his eyelids are heavy, threatening to fall close. “Won't your mom get worried?”

She lets out a dry laugh. “You don't know my mother. She probably won't notice I'm gone until tomorrow night, honestly.”

“That's kind of shitty.”

“Yeah, it's whatever,” she mutters. “I know she's trying her best - it's not easy being a single mom with a crappy job that barely manages to cover our expenses, I get that. And she had to deal my dad, her shitty ass excuse for a soulmate, for years, so I understand that it's hard for her.”

“What happened with your dad?”

Maya sighs deeply. “He was just – super awful to us.”

“You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I get it.”

“It's not that - it's just.” Maya disentangles herself from Lucas so she can sit up, wrap her arms around her knees and look out at the waves crashing against the shore. The wind stirs her hair so she gathers it up into a bun on top of her head. “You know about the whole soulmates thing, right?”

He nods.

“Okay, well, my mom has always believed in soulmates, has always waited for hers since her mother told her about it when she was young. It was exciting for her, the thought of having someone meant just for her. But when she met him – my dad – she didn't understand what she did wrong for the world to assign someone like him to her. He was cruel, but she thought she could love him anyway. She thought she was supposed to. So that's what she did for years, and then they had me, and he was still cruel and she still tried to love him even when she knew she didn't. And then he left, told her it was all her fault that they didn't work, that she was useless and worthless. That she wasn't enough and too much all at once.”

Lucas sits up then, places a hand on her back and waits to see if she's going to speak again.

“I don't blame her,” she tells him. “For not, you know, being there for me as much as I want her to be. It still sucks sometimes, but I'm used to it.”

“You shouldn't have to be.”

“Yeah, well, that's not something I get to decide.” She shakes her head, like maybe it'll get rid of all the cobwebs built up from years of neglect and rejection from the people she’d thought loved her. “Anyway. It doesn't matter. How about your mom? Won't she worry about the wellbeing of her good little cowboy who doesn't do anything wrong?”

He snorts. “I don't know about that."

“Are you trying to tell me I _shouldn't_ be calling you Mr. Perfect? But what have you done to not warrant that nickname, I wonder.” She taps her chin like she's thinking hard.

“I'm not sure my backstory is as tragic as yours, but,” he says as he mimics her earlier actions and wraps his arms around his knees. They look so big when he does that, she notices. And the problem is that now she doesn't know how to stop noticing. “My parents never really got along either. Nothing major, really, just some of your average marital disputes. They found each other when they were older – twenties or thirties or whatever, and it was fine, it was good, they liked each other. But just because two people like each other, it doesn't mean they should be together.”

“Are they? Still together, I mean?”

“Kind of. My dad was an active duty soldier in the army so he was never home for a long time, and honestly, as fucked up as it sounds, I think it was good for their marriage that they were so far apart from each other. I can actually remember what my mom looks like when she's smiling.”

“Did you miss him a lot?” she asks, mostly because she knows what's it like to be angry at a father but she doesn't know what it's like to miss one.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he answers. “He was tough, and traditional, but he was a good dad. And when he left, it messed me up. I wasn't used to not having him around all the time, so I started getting into a lot of trouble. Picking fights with people just because I could, because my dad wasn't around to discipline me and my mom was too soft on me. Got the scars to prove it. Even got held back a grade.”

“Are you okay now, though?” Maya asks hesitantly. She understands that it must have been hard for him, having a father coming and going into his life, leaving a mess behind him whenever he walks out the door again.

“He's home now, which is nice. For me, at least,” he answers, playing with his hands again. “I hear them down the hall sometimes. Their fights are never loud, but it's always – harsh. There's a lot of hurt. My mom’s been through a lot, especially when she had to take care of me all on her own, and he doesn't understand that. Sometimes I wish they would just get a divorce already so they don't keep putting themselves through that. They're too different, I don't know how they ended up becoming soulmates.”

“Maybe they'll work things out,” she suggests, trying to be helpful. She hopes, she hopes, that his parents get a better ending than hers did. “Maybe it'll be okay in the end.”

Lucas smiles, just a little, and she thinks she falls half in love with it. “Maybe.”

Maya reaches out, palm faced up, and he slides his fingers between hers easily.

“Thanks for listening to me,” he says.

She tilts her head and gives him a crooked smile. “You always listen to me and my pity parties. It was the least I could do.”

She's a little drunk on wine so that's the only reason why she leans up and kisses his cheek. At least, that's what she likes to tell herself.

*

Maya turns eighteen quietly.

She told Riley not to throw her a surprise party, not to make a big deal out of the day, which she, surprisingly, respected. Her mother worked all day, leaving before Maya even woke up that morning, so she spent the afternoon with her friends, setting up a picnic in the park, lying in the grass with Lucas and Missy while Riley, Zay, Smackle and Farkle played frisbee a few feet away.

Maya rolls a joint to share with Lucas and Missy, lights it up and takes a couple of hits before passing it on.

“You know what's a good song?” Missy starts, exhaling the smoke into the air. “Born to Run.”

“Bruce Springsteen?” Lucas asks, and Maya shoots him a surprised look as he takes the joint from Missy.

“That'd be the one,” she replies, and then begins to sing in an over dramatic rendition of the song that makes Maya laugh. “ _I want to know if love is wild, babe, I want to know if love is real._ It reminds me of us.”

Maya hums in agreement and presses a kiss to her hair.

“Who’s your favorite artist?” she asks Lucas after Missy grabs her phone so she can play the song.

He takes the joint from his mouth to press the end of it against hers until her lips wrap around it, his fingers brushing her mouth before disappearing too quickly. “Eagles.”

Maya’s eyebrows shoot up. “You like rock music?”

Lucas grins. “Is that such a surprise?”

“Well, yeah, Mr.Texas-raised-I-gave-birth-to-a-horse-and-sleep-in-cactus-print-underwear. I would've figured, like, Johnny Cash. Or Toby McGraw.”

“I think you mean Tim McGraw and Toby Keith.”

“Whatever, they’re all the same to me.”

He lets out a snort and shakes his head. “We've still got a lot to learn about each other, don't we?”

Maya blows out a smoke ring near his face and agrees. For the next ten minutes, Missy plays some of her favorite classic rock songs, attaching a memory to each one, until she ends up falling asleep on the blanket. Maya’s watching Riley blow the bubbles she bought at the dollar store at Farkle’s face, his eyes squinting in response. Watches as Zay runs towards Smackle, picks her up from behind and twirls her around as she lets out a surprised laugh. She usually doesn't let anyone touch her like that, but Zay is different than anyone else.

And her friends are happy. That's all she's ever really wanted.

“Hey, Maya,” she hears Lucas say. She turns her head to look over at him. Her mind is hazy, limbs loose, the weight of her skin around her bones heavy. “You know what song reminds me of you?”

She raises her arms in the air, and then her legs, to see how long she can keep them up. “Tell me.”

“It's a Guns N’ Roses one,” he answers, and picks a leaf from her hair. “Sweet Child O’ Mine. You know that one?"

Maya rolls her eyes and gives him a smile, lets a leg drop heavy on the ground. “Of course I know the song, Sundance. What do you take me for?”

Lucas grabs her phone that's resting on Missy’s stomach and searches up the song, letting it play softly around them before he starts singing along with it.

 _She's got a smile that it seems to me_  
_Reminds me of childhood memories  
Where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky_

Maya sits up then, tugs on Lucas’s collar until he's sitting upright with her, his face inches from hers. They're both a little high at this point, eyes bloodshot and muscles loose, and she feels good.

She likes the way he looks at her.

 _She's got eyes of the bluest skies_  
_As if they thought of rain_  
_I’d hate to look into those eyes  
And see an ounce of pain_

Maya takes a deep drag from the joint before hovering her lips over his own. His breath is hot against her mouth, his eyes a darker blue than she's ever seen, and her heart stops beating for a second before it rapidly picks up its pace again to make up for it. She presses her lips just over his, just barely touching, and exhales the smoke into his mouth. His eyes flutter shut for a brief second before he tries to press his lips against hers, but she stops him with a hand to his chest.

She gathers her hair into a pony tail then, if only to give herself an excuse not to look at him, to calm the beating in her chest.

He distracts himself from looking at her by taking the joint for another puff, lying back down on the blanket. Maya lies down on her side next to him after she figures she's composed enough, her cheek resting on her palm as she watches him, a smile on her face.

“Let's do something,” she says after a few minutes, her bloodshot eyes wide and bright.

He asks, “What do you wanna do?” His voice is a little wrecked, still trying to recover.

“I don't know. Anything. I feel so good right now. Do you feel good?”

“Yeah.”

She starts laughing. “I feel so good I forgot that my mother didn't even remember that it was my birthday for the fourth year in a row.” She pauses then. “Oh wait. I remembered again.”

Lucas passes her the joint and she takes a puff before she hears Zay yell, “Hey, blondie! Save some of that for the rest of the class!”

“Better get your ass over here if you want any then!” she calls back and takes another deep drag as he watches. Zay rolls his eyes and jogs over to where they are, snatches the joint from between her lips. Maya grins as he flops next to her on the blanket, careful not to jostle Missy awake. He rests his elbows on his knees as he takes a couple of drags, blowing smoke rings into the air above them.  

“What y'all talking about over here?” he asks as he watches Riley and Farkle. They're sitting across from each other by the lake, heads inclined towards each other, a small smile on Riley’s face as Farkle tells her something probably only she would think is funny.

“Did you know that huckleberry over here likes rock music?” Maya says, poking Lucas’s stomach.

“Mhm,” Zay replies. “You should see his room. It's like his own personal record store.”

Maya frowns and looks over at Lucas. “How come I've never actually been over to your house? You're always at mine. That’s hardly fair.”

He shrugs. “I guess I figured you already knew that you can come over anytime you want.”

“I'm gonna come over tomorrow and you're gonna show me your collection and we're just gonna listen to music all day, that's what we're gonna do. You’ll sing Sweet Child O’ Mine to me and I'll sing Your Song to you – or In Your Eyes – I haven't quite decided yet. But we're gonna have a grand ol’ time, Sundance, just you and me,” she tells him with a wide grin before she starts laughing. He laughs with her because this is so ridiculous, everything about them is ridiculous.

Fifteen minutes later they're all complaining about how hungry they are so Riley hands out the sandwiches she made and packed for everyone. It ends with Maya smearing Missy’s cheek with caramel-dipped fingers as Farkle and Smackle try to catch the grapes into their mouths that Lucas tosses at them. Riley and Zay are lying in the grass with their heads bent towards each other, cloud-watching, Riley’s occasional giggle like a comforting reassurance of her presence.

When the sun slinks low, they all go their separate ways, leaving Maya with a promise to text her later and a group hug that makes her feel safe and warm. She ends up at a tattoo parlor near the diner, still a little high, convinced that this is the best idea she's ever had.

“A birthday gift to myself,” she tells the tattoo artist after describing what she wanted.

It hurts more than she'd thought it would, which makes sense considering it’s on her rib cage, but she's overall pleased with the result. The words are in her own handwriting, cursive but a little messy.

" _Per aspera ad astra,"_ the tattoo artist says once she's finished, snapping her gloves off. “I like it.”

“It’s Latin, right? I saw the words in a dream once, I think,” she tells her, her fingers just hovering over the bandaged area, “a few years ago. I think it's supposed to mean something.”

“’Through hardships to the stars’,” the tattoo artist responds as she looks at her a little funny. “You really didn't know that before coming in here?”

Maya shakes her head. The words stir something in the back of her mind, and it almost feels like she already _knew_ what it meant, somewhere in her subconscious. Kind of like learning about something in school and years later only being able to surface pieces of it back up from your memory again when somebody reminds you of it.

“Thanks,” she says after the artist, Marly, gives her instructions on how to take care of her tattoo, leaving a couple of twenties on the counter before she leaves.

She ends up at the diner just after 12 am. It's quiet here, the only sound of a chair scraping back as the last customer walks to the cashier with squeaky shoes. Darby’s acrylic nails tapping against the cash register is a mind-numbing annoyance, so Maya puts in her headphones until someone comes to take her order, grabs a pen from her bag and idly draws tiny flowers blooming from the branches on the veins of her wrist.

She hopes whoever’s on the other end appreciates them.

Her real tattoo is a dull ache on her side, and she wants to touch it, but she ends up playing with the sugar packets instead. Ripping one open, she dumps it onto the table, pressing her thumb into the crystals. Maya wants to go home, see her mom, but she doesn't want to feel that type of bone-crushing disappointment again, so she decides to wait until she knows she'll be sleeping.

When someone sits down in the seat in front of her, she glances up to see that it's Charlie. He's grinning as he slides over a plate of blueberry pancakes with extra whipped cream in her direction, her usual, and sticks a candle right in the middle. “Happy birthday, Maya. You're officially an adult.”

“I don't consider myself legal until I can actually buy alcohol without a fake,” she replies, swiping a finger into the whipped cream. “But thanks. This is really nice of you.”

“No problem,” he says with a shrug and settles comfortably in the seat after making sure no one needs his services. “You been home yet? Seen Katy?”

Maya shakes her head. “No, but it's fine and I don't really wanna talk about it.”

Charlie sighs, runs his hands through his hair. “Okay. Yeah, sure, whatever you need.”

She takes a bite of the pancake, warm and delicious in her mouth, chewing slowly so she can think of something to change the subject. But he does it for her easily.

He asks about her friends, about her day, about her plans for whatever she does after high school, anything that doesn't have to do with her mother. And she goes along with it, because they're friends of course, and because he's an easy distraction. She shows him the tattoo she got, and he laughs when she tells him she didn't know what it meant until after.  

“Do you think it's connected to your soulmate?” he asks. She's wondered this too, idly, because it would make the most sense.

“Maybe,” she responds.

“Do you think you'll meet them soon?” he asks, fidgeting with the empty straw wrapper, tying it around his finger.

Maya shrugs. “Not sure. Not too worried about it. Why? Are you losing sleep over yours?”

Charlie briefly glances towards the ceiling. “It's frustrating, don't you think? Knowing you have a soulmate because you dream about them, but then not being able to remember them when you wake up. How are you supposed to know when you've met them?”

“You stop dreaming about them.”

“But how would you know that you've stopped dreaming about them if you can't even remember what they looked like?”

She pauses then, stumped on the question. “Hm. I don't know actually. Maybe it's just like – one of those things where it doesn't matter. Maybe this is just the universe’s way of being like ‘hey, you got someone who's just the perfect match for you and I'm telling you this but it's your job to find them.’”

“So, like, a choice.”

“Yeah, exactly,” she answers. “You've got one, you know you've got one, but you don't necessarily have to act on it.”

“If you found your soulmate, what would you do?” he asks.

Maya shrugs again. “I don't know. I mean I wouldn't drop everything to be with them because that's just silly. I feel like it would have to be someone I already know.”

Charlie hums. “Yeah but, I just want to meet my soulmate already. I'm tired of waiting.”

She smiles over at him. “Yeah, well, you've always been a romantic. You've probably planned the whole thing, right? Gender non-specific, of course, because that's just who you are.”

“Hey, you're a romantic too, you know,” he replies, nudging her foot under the table. “You're just not as obvious as I am, but I know you.”

Maya rolls her eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

Charlie scoffs. “Please. Don't even try to tell me that you didn't obsess over this when you were younger.”

“Okay! Okay,” she concedes. “Of course I've _thought_ about it – I mean, who wouldn't? It's a nice concept, you know, having someone made just for you. But I'm trying not to care too much about it anymore.”

“Just because your parents didn't have a happy ending doesn't mean that you won't.”

“I won't take that risk.”

“Aren't you curious, though? It could be awesome, Maya,” he tells her. “But you won't know that if you close yourself off from the idea.”

“I'm not closing myself off from it _completely_ ,” she says, “I'm just staying at a respectable distance.”

“Okay, but – what if you met your soulmate _right now_ ,” he asks, “what would you do?”

“Well it depends,” she answers. “If it's you, I’d throw myself off the nearest bridge immediately –“ He rolls his eyes at this – “If it's Kiera Knightley, I'd marry her in a second, you don't even have to ask.”

“What if it's one of your friends? What if it's Zay?”

She thinks it over for a few seconds. “I wouldn't mind. He's one of my best friends and we have fun together.”

“How about Riley?”

“I love her to death and I’d do anything for her, you know that. Honestly, if she's not my soulmate I don't know who is.”

“And Lucas?”

She opens her mouth, but then quickly snaps it shut. Lucas? Her soulmate? The thought had never even crossed her mind before. She'd never let it. He's too good for her, too good for all this baggage wearing down her shoulders. “That's ridiculous, he'd never be my soulmate.”

“How do you know?”

“Pfft, c’mon. The world would be really fucking cruel to make _me_ his soulmate. He deserves better than – this.”

Charlie leans forward in his seat, his eyebrows furrowed. “This? You mean, you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I mean me. I'm not – I'm not, you know, the best option out there. Not like Riley is, at least, a perfect example of someone who is a _million_ times better than I will ever be. For Lucas’s sake, I hope she's his soulmate.”

“Jesus, Maya, do you honestly believe that?”

“Yeah, and you don't? Everyone wants to be Riley’s soulmate. I mean, who wouldn't? She's Riley. I remember one time in sixth grade, a kid tried to make her think he was her soulmate by drawing a cat on his arm after he'd seen her draw it on herself. Obviously she knew and didn't let him get away with it, but. He and a bunch of other boys and girls in our grade looked at her like the sun shines out of her fucking _ass_. I don't blame them, though, she's a better person than all of us.”

“Okay, stop – stop saying that she's in someway _better_ than you. You've gotta quit comparing yourself to her,” he tells her, ripping out the sugar packet from her hands that she's been messing with. “You both are two very different people and you both are amazing in your own ways.”

“God, Zay already gave me this lecture, I don’t need to hear it again,” she grumbles, sliding down in her seat with her arms folded across her chest.

“Then why didn't you listen to it the first time?”

Maya sighs heavily, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Let's just drop this entire conversation, please.”

He pointedly stares at her before conceding. “Okay, fine. Pass the pancakes over; I worked a double tonight and I'm fucking starving.”

She slaps his hands away. “But these are my birthday pancakes, how dare you – “

 

When she gets home that night, around three in the morning, Katy’s passed out on the couch, still wearing her baby blue uniform. Maya’s about to grab the blanket by her feet to cover her up when she sees a gift bag dangling precariously from her fingertips.

She takes it from her carefully, Maya’s throat closing up with anticipation as she peeks inside. There's a piece of paper sticking out so she grabs that first, unfolding it to see Katy’s handwriting.

 _Happy 18_ _th_ _, baby girl  
_ _I know that you're out with your friends right now & I’m not sure when you'll be back, but I'm glad you're having a fun time – you deserve it. You deserve everything I can't give you. I'm sorry I'm not the type of mother you bring to career day or the kind who's able to buy you whatever you want, but I've been saving up and got you something I hope can be useful. It isn't much, but I wanted to give you a present this year to show how proud I am of you - you've come so far and worked so hard to get to where you are. I know I don't say it much, but don't ever doubt that you're absolutely the best thing to ever happen to me and I love you more than anything. But I'm working on it, I promise, I’m working on being better to you. _

_Part of your gift is inside, look outside for the rest_

_Hope it's good enough for you_

_-Mama_

Maya doesn't realize she's crying until she feels something wet on her arm. She wipes her cheeks with shaking hands and reaches inside to withdraw the content within the bag. It jingles in her hand, the edges cut into her palm. _Keys_ , she thinks before she even gets a look at it. She rushes to their window, tripping over the rug and bumping her hip against the table next to the couch in her haste. A cold gust of wind blows in once she throws open the window, and her eyes instantly latch onto the car parked outside in front of their complex.

The first thing she notices is the big red bow on the hood and a laugh bubbles out from inside her. It's a shitty ass car in desperate need of a paint job, can imagine it obnoxiously rattling and clanking while driving down the highway – but her mother got her a fucking _car_. Who the fuck cares how it looks?

Maya turns around and slips off her shoes, carefully lying down in the small space on the couch next to her mother, her body curling around hers. She wraps her arms around Katy’s waist, plants a kiss to her cheek and whispers, “Yeah, mom. It's good enough for me.”

Katy stirs but doesn't wake up. Maya hasn't felt this kind of safe in a long while.

*

“I can't believe you just said that to me, like, right in front my face like that,” she says as she flips through the third box of records on his bedroom floor. “What kind of monster are you.”

Lucas rolls his eyes and takes the Jack Daniels from her hand, pouring himself a shot as he sits back down next to her. “I told you - they're just not my thing.”

“That doesn't even make sense! The Beatles are everyone’s thing!”

“Not mine. They're honestly, no offense, like the worst band I've ever listened to.”

“I'm sorry, but we just cannot be friends anymore,” she responds. “It's not me, it's you.”

“That's fine,” he says, “At least this way I won't have to find a way to explain to my mother why all of her alcohol seems to be mysteriously disappearing.”

Maya grins at him just before tipping her head back to chug straight from the bottle. “I'm just glad that you have an impressive collection of Rolling Stones, though. I was worried you'd let me down.”

“Of course, they’re a classic.”

“And The Beatles _aren't?"_

“Maya, let it _fucking go."_

“Reason number 67 why Zay is better than you,” she continues as she grabs the record she was looking for.

“I know,” Lucas replies, watching her as she sets it in place, “he told me that all you guys do when you hang out is listen to the Beatles by his pool while shit-talking us. Appreciate that, by the way.”

She spins around with a grin stretching across her face, hopping down until she's right in front of him, her body trapped in between his bent legs. Lucas sets the bottle away from them so no accidental spills happen, and then rests his elbows on his knees, his thumbs brushing her sides.

“We have our own secret handshake, you know,” she tells him, playfully poking his chest. “We're very exclusive.”

“Are you trying to make me jealous?” he asks, the corner of his mouth curling up into that half-smile that she likes so much.

“Is it working?”

“It would be a lie if I said no.”

Maya laughs, tipping her head back, and when she looks at him he's got this grin on his face. Like she's – like she's something unreal. It unravels something deep within her but she tries not to think about it. “I brought you something,” she says instead. “Well, not really. I brought it so I can show it you.”

“What?”

She leans up to reach her bag on his bed, pulling out her sketchbook and handing it to him.

“Are you sure?” he asks hesitantly. “I thought you didn't show this to anyone.”

“Come on, Lucas,” she says, her voice soft and sure. “When are we gonna stop pretending that you're not just anyone to me.”

He nods, swallows so thick she can see his Adam's apple bob up and down, and takes her sketchbook. She sits next to him and watches his face as he flips through the pages. A lot of it consists mostly of surrealism, implausible creations stitched together from fragments of her dreams. Her friends’ faces take up the other pages, the focus on different details for each person – Riley’s laugh when she tips her head back, the crease in between Farkle’s brows when he's concentrating, Smackle’s nose scrunch when she finds something amusing, Zay’s foot placement as he dances across the room.

“You're really good, Maya,” he says, smiling as he comes across a rough sketch of himself. They got high together, just the two of them, in the back of his dad’s pick up one night when she didn't want to go back home. His shirt was somewhere in the front seat, the inside of his car hot with smoke, his skin glowing golden with sweat, hair mussed from his own fingers, and she really couldn't help herself – she had to draw him. He was beautiful in that moment, through the smoke haze in her mind, he was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

She shrugs, “I guess.”

“You're going places,” he says, his fingers absentmindedly tracing her sketches, lead smudges staining his wrist. “This is your ticket there.”

She rolls her eyes and snorts. “Please, huckleberry. I'm not, like, _Picasso_ or anything. This is just – a hobby.”

It's more than that, of course, and she knows he knows that.

He flips to the next page and his entire body stills.

“Oh,” she says as she looks over his shoulder to see the sketch of her dream boy. “That's - that's my soulmate, I think. Or what I could remember of him from my dreams anyway. It's not really much, I know.”

Now that she thinks about it, she can't exactly remember the last time she actually dreamt about him. She hasn't woken up in a cold sweat, reaching for her sketchbook to try to capture the remnants of him in charcoal before it disappeared completely since – when? Does this mean that she could've possibly met her soulmate already?

“’Through hardships to the stars’,” Lucas whispers.

“You know it too?” she mumbles, only slightly frustrated, “I feel like I'm literally the only person in the world who didn't know what that meant. Even Riley knew – “

“It was something my mom used to tell me all the time.”

She has to look up at him when his voice sounds strangled, forced, and Maya cautiously places a hand on his bicep. “You okay there, buddy?”

“Yeah, fine,” he replies.

“You wanna see something cool, then?” she asks, a smile tugging on her lips.

Lucas glances at her, hands in balled fists on his lap. “Sure.”

Maya jumps up from her spot on the floor, throws a “get ready” at him before lifting her shirt to show off her tattoo.

“Fuck.”

“I know – awesome, right?” she says. “Got it done last night. I was a little bit high still, so I hope I won't regret it when I'm 80 and dying, but it's fine.”

“Fuck. Maya – _fuck_.”

Her smile drops when she sees the look on his face. He's pale, legs unsteady as he stands up from the floor, fingers trembling as he combs them through his hair.

“What's wrong?”

Lucas stares at her for a long time before he starts to lift up his own shirt. It takes her a moment to register the words on his rib cage, on the same spot hers is located, and she feels her heart sticking between her teeth.

She clears her throat, voice wavering, and says, “Wow, I can't – I can't believe we got the same exact tattoo on the same exact spot – how crazy, what a coincidence, am I right?” because she's always been good at deflection.

“Maya, do you understand what this means –“

“ _No."_  She stalks over to him then, pulls his shirt down forcefully so she doesn't have to look at it anymore. “Don't you dare even say it. You are _not_ my soulmate. This is not how it was supposed to be.”

“How was it supposed to be then?”

“I don't know,” she answers. “But it wasn't – it wasn't supposed to be you.”

“Is this really such a bad thing, though?” His voice is so soft that she thinks it'll hurt too much to look at him. “Is there something wrong with being my soulmate?”

“No, that's not - that's not why.” Maya slides back down on the floor, the foot of his bed digging into her back. “It just can't be you. God, literally anybody but you.”

“This isn't really helping my ego here, you know,” he mumbles.

She doesn't know how to tell him that she can't handle it being him. She doesn't know how to tell him it feels like too much of a good thing that she doesn't deserve.

“Can we just – pretend this didn't happen?” she asks, almost desperately. She can see how the words cripple him, his body sagging on the floor next to her. “Please.”

“Yeah,” he says softly, “Of course.”

Maya breathes out a sigh of relief and they drink a little more after that.

Come midnight, there's an empty bottle of Jack Daniels between them, everything fragmented in her head, jumbled puzzle pieces she can't quite put back together. She blinks and sees the lamp sitting on his desk. Blinks, his clothes on the floor. Blinks, their shoes by the door.

Blinks, the boy she might be half in love with like a bag of bones sitting next to her.

*

The thing is he's always been good at looking at her, especially when he thinks she isn't looking back, but now it's like he can't seem to remember how to.

*

When she gets the acceptance letter in the mail, she doesn't tell anybody, opts to shove it underneath her pillow and pray for its disappearance instead.

It doesn't matter that she got in to NYU because it's not like she's going to be able to go anyway. She's known for a while now that the world doesn't dish out favors, even to the people who need it the most. She worked hard, she got into her dream school, but that's where life draws the line for a girl like Maya. It'd be foolish to hope for anything more.

But at least now she has her relationship with Katy to focus on, which, of course, didn't just automatically fix itself because Katy bought her a car. It doesn't work that way. But it does get easier. The coffee’s warm when she wakes up in the mornings, and they go grocery shopping on the weekends for frozen TV dinners and watered down juice. Katy tries to come home a little earlier some nights too, so they fall asleep on the couch while watching shitty reality tv shows together. It's not perfect, Maya doesn't think it ever will be any time soon, but it's getting there.

“Shawn says he can help with the car,” Katy informs her one morning. She's leaning against the kitchen counter with a coffee mug in one hand and the other in the pocket of her apron. “You know, if it ever needs anything. I know it's not the newest – “

“Mom,” she interrupts, with a smile. “Tell Shawn I said thanks. And I love the car, really. Riley and I were talking about painting it sometime, if that's okay. Maybe like a pale blue or baby pink.”

“Sure, sweet pea,” she says. “You can do whatever you want with it; it's all yours.”

Maya nods. She's never had something that's all hers before. She doesn't know what to do with a feeling that heavy.

Getting up from her spot at the kitchen table, she grabs Katy’s keys from the counter, her mother catching it effortlessly when she tosses it at her. “Don't wanna be late for work.”

Katy unhitches herself from the counter, hesitantly walks over to Maya to place a gentle, unsure kiss on her forehead before taking the keys and walking out the door. Maya takes her phone out, texts her mother a _Love you_ and waits until she gets one back not even thirty seconds later. Some things are too hard to admit to each other out loud when there's still so much in the way from before. But it gets easier.

When she's not trying to repair that fragile relationship with her mother, she drives down to Riley’s, where Farkle meets them so they can watch movies and get sick on too much buttered popcorn. Maya likes days like these with just the three of them together again like when they were younger, days where it's quiet and easy, resting her head on Riley’s shoulder and her feet on Farkle’s lap.

Riley tells them about a boy she met that she thinks might be her soulmate, only to redact that statement two days later because she met this girl at a basketball game and “ _Guys,_  she's perfect – she _has_ to be my soulmate.”

And Farkle doesn't talk about his relationship with Smackle much, but when he does it's hard to miss the light in his eyes.

“You're in love, little bird,” Maya says as she sprays whipped cream into her mouth straight from the can. “You know if she's your soulmate?”

“No, but that's okay with me,” he tells them. “It doesn't mean I'll love her any less if she's not.”

“You know what I heard?” Riley asks in that voice of hers she uses when she wants to bestow knowledge on the less intellectually privileged. Sometimes Maya really doesn't like that voice.

Riley tells them what she's learned. That if there's ever a chance that you and your soulmate are separated after being together, it's possible to start dreaming about them again.

And this is something Maya hadn’t known, so it comes as sort of a shock to her. She wonders if this could mean that her mother still dreams of her father, even though they're not together anymore, and the thought leaves a bitter taste like a rusted nail under her tongue. Katy never told her that something like that could happen.

Farkle thanks her for the new insight, and Riley grins.

But Maya’s stuck remembering all the times she's woken to her mother sitting on the couch past four in the morning, purple outlining her eyes, like she'd been afraid of what she might see when she closed them.

Not for the first time, she thinks what the fuck is the point of a soulmate if all they seem to bring is heartache.

*

Maya hasn't spoken to Lucas since they found out they were soulmates a week before, so she's surprised when she gets a call from him late one night.

She's curled up on her bed, studying for a Spanish test and listening for her mom to get home, when the incessant buzzing of her phone startles her.

“Lucas?”

“Hey.” She's immediately on high alert when she hears the sound of his voice – too strangled and tired for it to be just a friendly phone call.

“You alright?” she asks, sitting up against her headboard.

She hears a muffled sniffle, and then he tells her he's in Texas for the week. Tells her his Pappy Joe passed away a few days prior from a heart attack, and she feels her own shatter as she listens to his voice crackle in the static.  

“Lucas, God, I'm so sorry,” she whispers.

“Yeah, it's - it's fine. I just got back to the cabin from the funeral. It's real quiet now. No one knows what to say.”

“Was he a good man, Lucas?”

“Not really. Not to me. But he was still my Pappy Joe, you know? He was still family. My momma hasn't stopped crying for three days straight.”

Maya closes her eyes, rakes her nails through her hair so hard her scalp burns. “I'm sorry I wasn't there for you.”

“I understand.” He's silent for a few heartbeats so she can only hear the sound of his breathing. “I wish you were here, though. It's why I called you. It – it doesn’t feel so good that you're so far away because I started to remember some things. Like from your dreams.”

“Really?” she asks and sits up straighter. “Like what?”

Lucas tells her about the tree house they built when they were younger, and she remembers the skinned knees and peach teas her father would make. He tells her about the lake, where they used to skip rocks and lay in the grass to trace the stars with their pointer finger. He tells her about the diner they used to go to, the one next to her dream house, with the bright pink and blue neon lights.

“It's a little fuzzy,” he says, “but when I close my eyes I can see it. And it makes me miss you.”

Maya bites her lip and curls back into her bed under the blankets, lets a piece of herself go. “Dream about me then, huckleberry. When you go to sleep tonight, dream about me, and I'll be there.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I promise.”

“I don't mind it, Maya,” he whispers to her before she can hang up. “That you're my soulmate. I don't mind it. I'm glad it's you.”

She tastes the blood in her mouth when she bites down on the inside of her cheek. “I know. Go be with your family, Lucas.”

“Yeah. Okay, yeah. I'll see you later.” And then he hangs up, and Maya feels a little bit emptier than she did before.

When she falls asleep that night, she meets him in the forest. She's confused for a moment because it is not somewhere she is familiar with, but then she sees him and she forgets about being uncomfortable. He's wearing a tux and she smirks, tells him he cleans up pretty good for a cowboy.

He doesn't smile back, but he tries.

Maya steps towards him and he doesn't move as she tugs on his tie, keeping him steady when he stumbles into her.

“Tell me what you need,” she asks, trying her best to maintain eye contact. But he shuts them tightly and the whole world around them burns to the ground. She watches as branches snap off from the tops of the highest trees, embers sparking from the wood like a fireworks show, thick trunks bending and falling at the middle like they too have known how unbearable it is to hurt. “Lucas, come on, tell me how to help.”

She sees a campfire somewhere in the distance, sees it grow bigger and bigger with each passing second, afraid it's going to swallow the earth whole.

“It's just – I feel nothing and everything at once,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I don't know what to do with it.”

“Maybe next time try dreaming up daffodils in the spring,” she suggests and grips the crook of his arm, pulling him away from a fallen tree. “Or something that tastes nicer than burning wood.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “You just – you make it harder for me sometimes. Messes me up.”

“That's funny. In my dreams, you make things calmer.”

He's silent for a while, and she watches him tug at the ends of his hair, his eyes reflecting the fire, and she wants to calm whatever's raging on angry inside his head like he does with her. “You can't just say things like that to me, Maya. It's not fair.”

She frowns. “Like what?”

“Like that!” he exclaims unhelpfully, groaning as he tugs harshly on his tie and pulls it loose, throwing it on the ground. Maya almost wants to smile at his dramatics, but she refrains. “I finally found you and you made me feel like it didn't even matter. Maybe you think it didn't count because it was only in your dreams and not in real life but I remember. I remember your dreams, Maya, and I thought – I don't know, I thought that you liked me too. Or whatever.”

Maya snorts. “What is this, fourth grade? Do you want me to check yes or no?”

“ _Maya."_

“Right. Sorry. I'm just not used to – this.”

“Used to what?” he asks. “People liking you?”

“Yeah. It's gonna take me a while,” she tells him.

“Well I do,” he says to her and she wants so badly to believe him. “Like you, I mean. You make things better.”

Maya feels the smoke fill her lungs. The fire’s died down a bit and they're sitting at the edge of a cliff now, their feet dangling over the precipice. She doesn't feel as scared as she thought she'd be.

“You gonna remember this in the morning, huckleberry?” she asks.

“Of course I will.”

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath before speaking, resting her chin in her palm as she looks out at the horizon instead of at him. “It wasn't easy, growing up with half a mother and a father who didn't bother to care. And then Riley shows up and it gets better but it's still shitty because no matter how hard she tried she couldn't fix everything. Sometimes she made things worse. And of course I love my mom and Riley more than anything, but I would think to myself sometimes that I just want  _one_ good thing to happen. Just one really beautiful thing.” Maya kicks her legs back and forth, suddenly feeling very shy. “So thanks. For being that thing.”

When she looks back at him, he's got a smile on his face that makes her insides feel like this whole forest after its burned down to the ground. He looks soft so she leans her head on his shoulder and he wraps an arm around hers.

Lucas spends the rest of their time telling her stories about his Pappy Joe, all the shit they got into when he used to live in Texas, and she knows she'll remember these stories when she wakes up in the morning. And maybe this, getting to see him even when they're miles apart, is a little okay if he can manage to smile like that even after he's been knocked down.

In the end, they're just two damaged, broken things sitting at the edge of the world with their hearts on their tongues, ash falling around them like rain.

*

It’s two in the morning and she's at a lonely gas station with Missy, for old time’s sake.

Missy’s tossing some salt and vinegar chips and candy bars into a basket, stuffing packages of beef jerky into her jacket pocket when she thinks the cashier isn't paying attention.

“So you in love with him yet?” she asks Maya, who's three aisles over deliberating on what drink she's in the mood for.

“In love with whom?” she asks. “Also, Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew?”

“Dr. Pepper,” Missy answers, and then: “With Lucas.”

Maya picks the bottle from the shelf and meets Missy where she is. “Does it matter?”

The other girl rolls her eyes and snaps her gum obnoxiously. “Yeah, it does, you idiot. It matters to you. I know you like him already. I know that he's your soulmate. So what's the hold up?”

She sighs heavily. “Nothing, I'm just – not sure if now’s the right time.”

“Listen, your ass is gonna give me an early death with all this bullshit you spit about what you think you do or don't deserve,” Missy says. “You're not broken or damaged beyond repair. You gotta whole lotta problems but that doesn't mean that you can't be happy too. Those things are not mutually exclusive, and it's about goddamn time you start seeing yourself as worthy enough for this dumb white boy that you seem to like so much – God knows why.”

Maya furrows her eyebrows at her, one hand on her hip. “Since when did you become an expert on this kind of stuff?”

“Since you decided to be an idiot and refuse to admit that you have fee – “

“No!” Maya trips over herself trying to clamp her hand over Missy’s mouth. “Don't say it out loud.” Missy’s eyebrows shoot up in amusement and Maya rolls her eyes. “I just – I need time.”

“Don't wait too long, Maya,” she tells her once she removes Maya's hand from her mouth. “He'd wait forever for you, but that's not really fair to him, is it?”

Maya clicks her tongue then, drags them to the register to pay for their things. She fishes out quarters and dimes from her back pocket and tosses them on the counter. “Just because _you_ found your soulmate and you're _happy_ and in _love_ and just  _gross,_  doesn't mean that – “

“It totally does,” Missy interjects, with a half smirk on her face that Maya finds too smug for her liking. “You and me? We're the same, Maya. Deadbeat dad and lonely hearts club, remember? That's us. But the difference between me and you is that when I found her, when I found Marie, I allowed myself to love and be loved – as fucking corny and disgusting as that sounds. Sure, I was scared but it was okay because I knew I could trust her.” Missy pauses then to look Maya directly in the eye so she can fully understand how serious she is. “I know you're scared, but I also know that you trust Lucas. What happened to the Maya Hart I knew? The one who wasn't afraid to take risks?”

Maya scoffs and rolls her eyes. “I'm still Maya. I'm just Maya that knows no one ever stays when they say they're going to. What makes my soulmate any different? I'm not gonna make the same mistake my mom did.”

“Right. That all makes sense. But, Maya, this is _Lucas_ we’re talking about. Even _I_ know his whipped ass would bend over backwards to make you happy.”

“Miss.” The girls whip their heads to the cashier. He looks unamused on a whole other level, his fingers drumming on the counter, mouth pinched at the corners. “You're gonna have to pay for the stuff in your jacket too.”

Maya gives her a look and Missy rolls her eyes, opening up her jacket to let the beef jerky sticks fall on the counter. She takes out her wallet, leather and worn at the edges, and slaps a ten in front of him. “Gimme a pack of Marlboro while you're at it.”

The cashier bags her items, sticks the pack of cigarettes in one, and hands it to her.

Missy grins from ear to ear and says, “Keep the change.”

“Thanks so much,” he deadpans and the two girls make their way out of the gas station with their arms linked, sharing a cigarette on the way to the park. Maya tastes Missy’s cherry chapstick whenever she inhales.

“You just have to give it a shot,” Missy states. They're on the swings by then, and Maya's kicking at the sand with her feet.

“Is this still about Lucas? I thought we were done with that awful and pointless conversation,” she mumbles.

“Promise me you'll try,” she says, hitting Maya in the stomach when they're in the same rhythm. “I want you to be happy too. Then we can have double dates, how cute would that be? Go out for brunch and shit.”

“I literally just barfed in my mouth a little bit.”

“Just think about it, okay?”

Maya doesn't tell her that that's all she's really been able to think about since she found out, but she nods her head anyway and they move on.

*

She climbs through Riley’s window like she used to when she was younger, and she finds her best friend already sitting there, like she's been waiting for her to show up.

Maya lies down with her head in her lap and closes her eyes when Riley’s fingers find their way in her hair.

“Tell me what's the matter, peaches,” she says softly. “I feel like you've been hiding from me.”

“Not you precisely,” she mumbles. “Try the whole world. Being a person with feelings is exhausting.”

Riley laughs a little bit, but tugs on her hair, urging her to continue.

It takes her a couple tries to get the words out.

“I keep thinking about - what you said. That when you fall in love, it's just something you're gonna have to deal with. The problem is that I don't know how to do that. I thought it would be easy to just, you know, ignore it. But it's not. It just keeps on getting bigger and I just feel like it's gonna swallow me.”

Riley stays quiet for a little while, her fingers still scratching comfortingly at her scalp. “Is this about Lucas?”

“Yeah. And it's just – I don't understand how can he make me feel so calm but confused and scared at the same time.”

“I think that's just what love is,” she says. “I don't know much about the feeling. I always think I'm in love and then I'm not. But I do know it when I see it. I see it with my parents, I see it with Farkle and Smackle, and I see it with you. Especially you. You have so much love in you, Maya, I don't know how it hasn't split you open. And it's like you think no one can see how much you care, but everyone knows. You're soft, but that doesn't mean you aren't strong. So you can be in love with Lucas, and it'll be okay, because you can survive anything and he's just a boy. A boy who loves you very much and wants to take care of you, and you should let him. You should let someone take care of you for once.”

Maya swallows and shuts her eyes tightly because if she opens them she knows she's going to start crying. The truth is Maya’s always admired Riley's softness, her tendency to be gentle even when the world isn't kind to her some days. She’s wished all her life that she could be like that but all Maya's ever known is anger. And all she's ever known what to do with that anger is to be hard and callous, even towards those she loves. She'd never thought of herself as anything other than undeserving of kindness from anyone.

“And this isn't even about ‘soulmates’ or whatever,” Riley continues. “He would love you even if you weren't. That's not something everyone can say.”

She sighs, rubs her eyes with the heel of her palms. “This is a lot. This is too much.”

“Maybe you're just making it too much,” she suggests. “Love doesn't have to be complicated, Maya. But you have to admit to yourself that you love him before you can admit it to him.”

Maya doesn't say anything, her confession dying on her lips. She knows she loves him – she's known for a while if she's being honest with herself. But she thinks about all the promises like tally marks etched onto her skin that no one has bothered to keep, and her tongue feels heavy.

But then she thinks about her mom. And Riley. And all her friends. They've all stayed, and maybe that could be enough to cancel out all the ones who haven't.

*

Zay is the first one she tells.

It's nearing summer of their senior year and everyone's been talking about college, and their future, which are things Maya doesn't very much care to talk about.

Her mother found the letter when she was in Maya’s room picking up clothes from the floor to wash, so Maya could only guess that it must've fallen sometime in her sleep.

Maya had walked into her room one afternoon after school to see Katy sitting at the edge of her bed, the crumpled up piece of paper in her hand, and tears in her eyes.

“Maya, why didn't you tell me?” she'd asked. “This is _huge."_

She'd told her mother she won't be going. They don't have enough, and she'll take a year off to work as much as she can so she can afford it on her own. But Katy just told her that that's nonsense, that she's going to college, that she'll work two jobs if she has to. That she'll make it work somehow, because they always do.

That was the first time they hugged so hard she felt her rib cage stitch itself back together after feeling like it's been splintered for so long.

She wanted to tell Riley first, but she found herself already walking to Zay’s place.

“I just want to put it on record that I never doubted you,” he says after she's showed him the letter, clapping her on the back.

Maya rolls her eyes, but she feels lighter, like she can breathe again. And for the first time, she feels like she can _hope_ again. And the person she wants to talk about it with is Lucas. She realizes then that it's always going to be Lucas.

“You know what this means, right?” he asks with his eyebrows high in amusement. “You, me, and Lucas are all going to the same college. Which _means_ we're gonna get into some _major_ shit. Maya, I'm pumped as _fuck_ now, so you can't back out.”

She laughs, genuinely and whole-heartedly, and hugs him tight, tight, tight. She didn't realize just how much she's needed that.

*

When she walks into the diner, she's surprised to see Riley sitting at a stool and talking to Charlie like she's been doing it her entire life. She's leaning on her elbows over the counter, her smile wide and free, and Charlie looks just as enamored.

Maya doesn't want to bother them so she sits at her usual table, and waits. It takes about fifteen minutes before Riley realizes she's there, and she only stops by her table to tell her that she's going on a date and she'll tell her all about it later and “oh my gosh, Maya, life is so funny sometimes, don't you think?”

She doesn't really understand what this is referring to but she agrees anyway and Riley’s spot is soon replaced by Charlie. He’s grinning at her something wicked and Maya raises one eyebrow in question.

“What was that all about?” she asks.

Except he can't really speak since he's smiling so much. So Maya does all the talking. Sometimes she feels like he's her therapist, in a way, always lending a shoulder to shove all her problems on. But this time, she's got good news, so she tells him about Katy and she tells him about NYU and he gives her advice about campus life, and she feels like just a normal teenaged girl without the weight of the entire galaxy on her back.

*

It's just past eleven in the evening when she tells him to come over. For some reason she has an easier time admitting this kind of stuff when the moon and the stars are out. It seems less intimidating that way.

When he comes in, she's sitting on the kitchen counter top swinging her legs back and forth and popping green grape after green grape into her mouth. She hopes she looks more nonchalant than she feels.

His hands are stuffed in his pockets and she's suddenly reminded of that nine year old boy with the sad eyes who she first saw in her dreams. She has the urge to tell him right then in the middle of her kitchen, the confession dancing at the edge of her tongue, pressing against her teeth, crawling up along her throat and screaming _let it out, let it, let it out._

She nudges his side with her foot instead. “We could share an apartment,” she says, “since we’ll both be at NYU anyway. It'd just make sense, right? I’m sure Zay wouldn't mind living with us, either.”

His eyes widen and shine under the florescent lightbulb hanging from her stove top, his mouth opening to say something but she interrupts him.

“We could go to brunch with Missy and her girlfriend,” she says. “Or Riley and Charlie. Or Farkle and Smackle. You know, do that gross double dating thing that couples seem to like to do for some reason.”

She knows he wants to speak, but she doesn't let him yet, derailing his train of thought by looping a finger through one of his belt loops to tug him closer until he's standing between her legs.

“We could paint the walls to match our mood that day,” she continues, a smile pulling the corners of her lips. “We could get a place with a balcony so I can sit out and sketch on Sunday mornings while you sit there and drink your coffee and actively hate the Beatles or whatever it is that you do.”

He snorts at this, but doesn't speak, not until he's sure she's finished.

“We could take road trips, visit our friends – Riley and Missy at Columbia. Farkle and Smackle at Cornell. And I'd make you drive, obviously, while I eat all the snacks so you don't get any and we'd have to stop at this sketchy gas station past three in the morning just so you can get some stale pretzels.”

“I hate pretzels.”

“Sure you don't. You were eating chocolate covered ones just the other day.”

“I hate pretzels that aren't chocolate covered.”

Maya grins, pinches his cheeks like he's five, and says, “Then we'll get those just for you.”

He nods, his grin growing to match hers, and lets her continue.

“Trips to the beach too. That's another thing. Get so much sand in our hair we'd have to help each other wash it away in the bath later. Build sandcastles like when we were kids.”

He gets impatient then, interrupts with, “Maya, what is it exactly that you're saying to me.”

“I think you know exactly what I'm saying.” She takes a deep breath and looks him in the eyes as she says: “Lucas, I’m ready and I wanna be with you. I love you and I have loved you. In my dreams and here, now.”

Lucas exhales a breath of relief, his eyes closing as his head falls onto her shoulder. “You have no idea how long I've waited to hear you say that.”

Maya curls her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck. “Sorry it took me this long.”

“Don't be,” he says as she tugs his head back up. He's not holding anything back when looks at her, and neither is she, not anymore.

When she kisses him, it's soft at first, lips unsure, trying to find their footing at the edge of a precipice. But his hand is firm, certain, on her thigh so she kisses him deeper, kisses him with everything she has, kisses him to bridge all those years of loving each other quietly.

She’s the one to back away first, but he stays close and she traces his smile with the tip of her finger. “So you love me, huh?”

Maya rolls her eyes and shoves at his shoulder. “Don't make me regret it.”

“I love you too,” he says, “just in case that wasn't so obviously clear.”

“I think I need to hear it again,” she teases. “And again, and again, and again.”

“And you won't get tired of hearing it?”

She thinks he's crazy if he thinks that could ever happen. Maya leans forward to rest her head on his chest. She's been so tired and he makes her feel so relaxed. “Thanks for loving me.”

His mouth lightly brushes the crown of her head. “You don't have to thank me for that.”

*

They graduate high school with a bang, throwing their caps into the air and opening up a bottle of champagne on Riley’s rooftop once the party is over and the parents are asleep.

Zay and Smackle are blowing up balloons and filling them with water to throw them at Riley and Farkle, who are tripping over themselves as they try to dodge away from them. Missy’s filming the entire thing, her laughter bouncing off the walls.   

Maya and Lucas are lying on a blanket they've laid out, his arm around her waist, fingers lightly tracing the words on her rib cage.

“I don't know how I got so lucky,” he tells her.

“Don't make me vomit.”

“I'm serious! I can't believe I get to love you for the rest of my life. This soulmates thing is pretty awesome, if you ask me.”

“I didn't ask you.”

Lucas pinches her side lightly and she laughs, curling into him.

She agrees, though. About the soulmates thing. Even though she struggles sometimes, with reminding herself that she does deserve to be loved, that she is more than just destruction and chaos.

And he likes to tell her on days she doesn't remember. That she made flowers bloom on his skin when his house got so loud he had to sit on his roof until dawn, made him believe that the world is more than just a constant war zone, but that there was something out there worth fighting for. That her hands were not created to destroy. That although she may have too many footprints stamped onto her heart from people who were reckless, it doesn't mean she has to shield it away from those who are careful.

Eventually she learns to believe him.

Because that's what time tends to do. It takes something heavy, something angry, and turns it into something quiet and something soft.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm [here](http://www.lucayae.tumblr.com)


End file.
